


Burn

by Clairvoyantkid



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Kissing, Love Confessions, Neck Kissing, Other, Romance, Romantic Fluff, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-27
Updated: 2018-09-27
Packaged: 2019-07-18 02:57:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16109354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clairvoyantkid/pseuds/Clairvoyantkid
Summary: Karkat was fire.That was the most ample word to describe the creature I knew.





	Burn

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a comment or kudos at the end!! Thank you for reading!!

Karkat was fire. That was the most ample word to describe the creature I knew. He burned with a habitual rage. Every word he spoke was a blaze of that eternal flame, as his lungs scorched the very air he breathed.

A deep fury was held inside him and I wouldn’t dare to lay a finger on that boy without utmost care. These days, every touch he spared me was a rare and generous thing.

He was feral and intimidating, or so he’d present himself as though he was. Those ebony locks framed his thin, ashen grey cheeks like the mane of an animal—unkempt and shaggy. When he growled his flagrant dialogues, a pair of sharp white canines glimmered in the light. His chimerical existence teased the edges of my own statutes of belief.

Karkat was a different breed, a different kind. He wasn’t like me, his body wasn’t mine, and his eyes held a different glare.

There was a time where he had been ravenous, something relentless and grand despite his deficits—if you could even call them that. He had been a squall of a troll once. Noise, motion and enmity.  
Now, he was defeated, worn and exhausted. 

When I admitted to myself that I ached for the return of such excitement as he had wrought, I became ashamed. Shame is the feeling that dug itself into me like the set of claws that emblazoned Karkat’s own fingers.

It was a pitiful threat, but as he rested beside me, coiled in the sheets of my bed, he was absolutely vulnerable.

Karkat was positioned in a whirlwind of his own limbs, the tips of his toes and knees brushing gently against mine. His tousled head of hair was strewn about the pillow he was clutching so possessively to his chest like a halo. The tattered grey sweater—practically a second skin for him now—still clung pathetically to his body, awkwardly exposing his narrow hips and stomach. Each rise and fall of his ribs was jostled by a tremor that made him seem as though he were on the edge of shattering like glass.

My fists were balled up to my chin, and my warm aspirations between them created a separate atmosphere from within the bunches of my sleeves. The blankets that were meant to cocoon us had long since been kicked to the floor in favor of his fidgeting motions. The room was grey and hollow but it felt loud, full, and busy, even in silence.

He had come to me, in the dim light of my room as I had just begun to let my dreams take me. Standing in my doorway, he was a supernatural being, something not quite lucid. I didn’t know at the time that he would linger there with me through those black hours. For whatever dark thoughts had gripped him so readily, it was apparent only I could pacify them.

“Karkat?” I called out barely audibly, testing the waters of his apparent dormancy. I ran my tongue over my lips. They were dry and chapped from the arid air.

Karkat stirred.

His perfect, otherworldly mouth parted faintly to allow the release of a short, stuttered breath and his bushy brows furrowed gently all at once. I flinched in response, and quickly scrambled back across the mattress, putting a body of space between us. There were small, empty cold spots left in the places where our bodies had connected.

His lips pulled fully back, a small snarl pressed into the curve of his nose as he lay in temporary limbo between sleep and consciousness. A small simper pressed itself into the fabric blanketing my wrists as I admired his goofy mannerisms and him in general. He was almost always in a state of ire, so these rare moments were treasured. This was the first time I’d seen him sleep so close to me. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t spent hundreds of nights tucked away in the clutches of slumber. Though, they hadn’t been with me. I wondered where his mind had gone and watched him like a rare specimen.

Karkat groaned and rolled over onto his back and I reflexively sat up, a rush of blood to my head making dark spots form in my vision. I didn’t want to make him think I’d invaded his personal space. Although, he had been the one to inch so close to me. So near, I’d felt his unnatural warmth through my clothes. His body radiated an intensity that was unparalleled.

Karkat’s eyes slowly blinked open: two thin, golden crescents, with a grimace still contorting his features. I watched his pinprick pupils slide lazily from the ceiling down to his right side, where they rested upon me.

“Anny?” Karkat gasps. “What are you doing here?” The scowl on his face softened as he spoke. His voice was raspier than I was used to, which was precious in its own way. For I had almost begun to suspect he was wasting away, with his reserved, quiet demeanor. He was an echo, gradually dissolving over time.

“This is my bed, Kat,” I said as I rested my cheek tiredly on one knee. His eyes immediately widened and he gazed around to confirm my statement.

“Oh, I’m sorry...” Karkat stared up at me in chagrin before looking down to notice his current state of dishevelment—his clothes in disarray. He instantly tugged down at his shirt, his cheeks reddening. I could never understand how he seemed to grow smaller, how easily I could unnerve him with the simplest glance. Sometimes it was refreshingly humorous, other times it was confusingly sensual.

“It’s ok. Last night you seemed so tired,” I said.

“It’s nothing I can really help,” Karkat groaned in reply, sitting up in exaggerated agony. He rubbed at his temples.

“It’s true. You barely manage out there,” I let out a long yawn and laughed, finding amusement in his statement. Karkat didn’t seem amused.

“Yeah, I’d rather be in here than out there with that douchenozzle,” Karkat mumbled, his face almost immediately deepening in color as he realized the intimacy of his words. He sneakily side-eyed me to check my response.

I cocked my head to the side and raised a brow, my grin spreading across my cheeks. Karkat avoided my stare like an injured dog. He had been worn so deep, so tremendously raw, that the simplest show of affection hit him like a cruel slap.

  
“Well, I’m not making you go anywhere,” I hummed.

“Good. I mean... I know.” Karkat seemed uneasy and jittery, with his nails digging into the ankles he was now resting them upon. His skin had become a sickly pink, rather than its usual cooler hue.

“It’s not like I mind when you sleep here,” I said softly in an attempt to soothe him.

“I know that too.” Karkat snapped his head to look at me, his teeth prodding out at his full bottom lip. He glowered to mask his obvious embarrassment.

“Okay, I wasn’t implying you didn’t,” I swiftly held up two palms in defense and offered an apologetic smirk. He turned away from me now, his back hunched over awkwardly, like a cat with its hackles raised. I wondered to myself if Karkat had ever once felt welcomed before, in his whole life.

I slipped back down against the wall that was pressed up to the plain side of the mattress. The pillow caught my abrupt descent, billowing out around my head and shoulders to cradle my strained form. I relaxed my muscles, allowing the dull pain of staying stiff and motionless for hours to recede. My legs stretched and spanned out before me, and a deep sigh rattled my lungs open as I arched my back and tried to relax again.

“Do you want to lay down again?” I offered, but when I glanced over, I found Karkat staring at me with an intense and hunted look. Quickly clearing my throat, I fought down my own flush and collected myself a bit more upright. “If you’re still feeling tired, I mean.”

“I’m okay,” Karkat inhaled, almost too sharply. “I’m growing stupidly disinterested when it comes to sleep. I basically don’t even know what’s it was like to dream.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t have another way to entertain you right now,” I chuckled in response.

“That’s fine.” Karkat shrugged, pouting ever so slightly. “I probably should leave anyways-“

“Kat,” I said, snagging his attention as he had just started to properly get up. His expression was primed with an odd expression I couldn’t put my finger on. “Lay down with me already,” I commanded anyway, a gentleness in my tone.

Karkat hesitated but fell compliant to my request, like usual, knowing better than to question my oddly harsh order. Guardedly, he crawled on all fours into the warmth of the opening I left for him there beside me. He crumpled down beside me like the failed draft of a poem. The cushions sunk around his added weight, briefly causing his torso to lean into mine. Instantly, he recoiled at the contact. Karkat wasn’t sentimental and he wasn’t solicitous. He didn’t touch with the hand of a lover but of an animal, wide-eyed in the headlights.

“You’re always a million miles away, Kat. Like you don’t want anyone to get to you.” His eyes met mine as I spoke, and I took delight in the way his usual scowl had mellowed into patient repose. My gaze broke first, a flittering blink. “Can’t you just... stay with me... for a while?” I pleaded.

“Yeah,” he murmured. Although, the wheeze that escaped his teeth made his reply sound desperate, almost begging. Karkat played with his tresses, trying to find a way to make every lock sit in place.

“Are you scared?” I asked, suddenly. Impossibly hushed, but I was concerned my volume might scare him off.

“Of what?” he asked back.

“Of what’s to come,” I said.

There was always that nagging uncertainty, in every second we spent in the confines of that place. No matter how distracting the moment, there was always the definite promise of the end.

The conclusion of the journey and the possible fights ahead.

“Yes,” he whispered. There was the echo again.

“Oh.”

“But, I guess I shouldn’t-“ Karkat gulped at the air like it was some magic serum, something to fill him with enough life to finish his thought, “worry... too much.”

“Why not?” I asked, and I would’ve liked to have convinced myself I inquired out of reflex and not genuine interest.

“Because, um...” Karkat started, blinking furiously, “Whatever happens will happen... or whatever that bullshit even means.”

“So, you think we’ll be alright?” I asked, trying to sound smooth and kind and not too excited with the intricate entirety of this conversation.

“No,” Karkat gave an awful little cackle, a hitched, hateful rasp of a laugh. “No, I don’t. But, we really don’t have the option of failing anymore do we.”

He reeks of fear and confusion, childish dread.

“I suppose not.” My whole body fought my tongue when I talked. An animalistic urge to stay alive, to claim I was invincible and that the game hadn’t taken a part of me. There’s something that still believes itself indomitable, endless.

“Yeah.” That word doesn’t even sound real anymore with all his broken inflections.

“Karkat.” I began a new thought, and he turned as though on a leash I had tugged. “I think I want to pretend.”

When I turned to him, sudor and blood rich capillaries had both laid themselves thickly across the bumpy and angular growths that made up his face. All of a sudden, I knew I didn’t need to finish my thought, because he already knew what I had meant. His visage already had captured every unspoken syllable I had yet to formulate.

Without warning, he went and grabbed at my hand and I was startled, but then guilty for it. I had believed somehow that he would’ve gone right through me like a spirit, a specter of his former self.  
A ghost, as so many of my friends had become. We hadn’t really touched in what had felt like a millennia. Only fleeting brushes in the halls or the graze of his shape as he lay next to me, just a hundred years behind.

He ran his thumb over the range of my tightened knuckles, as though to count the notches. There was an oddity in his eyes, in the shape of his brows, as he squinted. I could barely read him. He was like a language I’d learned and long since forgotten. The slightest pull of his skin was a rare, dead dialect.

I came to life, briefly, and splayed my fingers out to touch his. It was nothing but a motion, but it felt like I was moving mountains.

Every inch of where we connected,  
burned.

“Pretend with me then. Please,” Karkat said, finally, with the shyness of a person that he was not meant to be. The repetition of my wording felt unnatural coming from his mouth.

A fever gripped through me in an instant, like being electrocuted. A vigorous, shocking hunger. My nails sunk into the meat of his hand, my tongue prodding at the roof of my mouth, and I saw him wince. Every nerve, every atom was paying attention to him, reveling in him.

“What... what do you mean?” I licked at my lips, very prudently. For a brief period, it was almost as though I could smell him, and perhaps I could. Young and virile and fiery. Every particle between us was charged, electric. I wanted to be gentle, I wanted to be patient and know how to wait. Although, with him so close, my stomach was thick and knotted in on itself. I felt I was young again, simple and unafraid of life, because life had made sense then. I felt like what I didn’t want to admit that I was: desperate.

“Please, don’t make me talk, don’t make me fucking say it,” Karkat whined, like he was broken and beaten. There was nothing left there to mend. He was so close, so dangerously close to me that all I would have to do is slide over and we would verge.

It was when he finally whimpered in panic, as if distraught at the very idea of having to force any more sound from his lips. It was when his lanky, slender body seemed to convulse from it, that I gave in.

I found that my hands fit so unfairly neat on his waist, as I pulled myself snug against him. His hands curled cautiously into the fabric of my shirt, holding it tight, and we both took a long, shuddering breath.

“Thank you,” Karkat mumbled.

His head fit into the crook of my shoulder, his wet air, my neck. He was like the missing puzzle piece that my curves had longed for—cut out of clay and formed for me. Karkat was real, determined. My only true regret was that I hadn’t held him so intimately, sooner. Even as decayed and decrepit as he was, he contained the bud of something magnificent and powerful. I wanted to light him, set him ablaze, and put him out.

”Can I kiss you,” I said, and it wasn’t a question. My voice didn’t tremble. There was nothing unsure or questioning in me, but Karkat still solidified in my grasp. His nerves turned to stone and melted all at once. “Unless you don’t want to-“ I started to say after a tentative second, but he shook his head, pointedly drifting forward. He was blushing so dark now, he was one artery, one pool.

“Kiss me,” he pleaded, he prayed.

  
At that, I cupped the side of his face, turning the swell of him just so. I took his boiling, damp skin and molded it into the arc of my own sweaty palm. The distance between us closed so quickly, it was astonishing. There were no invisible borders, no walls to stop me from melding myself to him as I had predicted.

When we touched, his rough leather on my silken maw, starlight crackled and buzzed within my heart and balefire danced between us. Karkat was scalding and taut on my lips. He was so messily new at this like a newborn lamb afraid to move. I spread him carefully and precisely with my mouth and he yielded to my touch. A deep guttural groan was pulled from his airway and I laughed a little. Me, with my round ears, flat teeth and fragile anatomy. There was no leader in that room, no species, no laws or limits. There was only the steady pulse of his veins demanding my primitive, cardiac thrum and the sporadic response I gave.

I pulled away without warning, and he chased me. His fluttering lashes barely hid his round and solid pupils, like black pools of fervor. 

“What?” Karkat huffed, shooting for bitter but falling short into frightened. He was too cute.

“I love you,” I said, and pressed my lips back to the corner of his, searing dewy blotches there. My fingers touched to his chin, the ambit of his throat, the frenetic lift of his chest.

“Oh.” Karkat’s voice broke even on that little scrap of sound. The noise cut his voice into a high sliver, strangling him, and it drove me in once more. I held his jaw in one hand like a prized jewel, cradling his hips to me with the other. He shuddered with choked off gasps between every peck I placed upon him.

I didn’t need him to reciprocate. Had he even attempted to force it, I would have been sickened that he felt so obligated around me. The sentence I had uttered was a deeply alien thing, uncertain and shockingly harsh on his ears. His every sloppy, unfixed movement was the arduous scream of idolatry, and was enough. I expected no less. It was a vivid reminder of the husk Karkat was, of every chunk of him that he was missing. The others had ravaged him, without mercy, without forgiveness, but with rigid cuts. I wanted to take something too, but softly, kindly. Everything.

“I’m sorry,” he slurs into me, trying to multitask pathetically. “I didn’t- this isn’t what you-“

“Don’t be,” I cooed, slipping the pads of my hand over his lips, cutting him off and us apart. “I do want you here. I want you like this.”

Karkat stilled, pacified, and I sprawled him flat on his back so that I could lounge heavy and poised upon him. I didn’t know my own body. Every motion felt like I’d been programmed to complete it. Glaring down at him, his extremities finally unfroze and skirted the edges of my shirt, pawing under the hem. He inched nervously across the pattern of my ribs, his nails brushing there longingly. Feeling at the knobs of my vertebrae, I loosened to him. I could clearly feel his palpitating heartbeat in every place our bodies touched and I wasn’t sure this boy truly knew how to connect. I didn’t want his consideration, I wanted him open and shameless. There was no room for guarded forbearance, for we were running out of time, or perhaps running with it.

Out of patience, I pinned him suddenly beneath me and moved down again, this time to press my lips to the apex of his neck and shoulder, eliciting a pleasant shiver and then idleness from him. My thighs clasped to either side of him, twining me with the torso underneath. I laid more small kisses, one after the other upon his throat, relishing each small breathy noise that I was able to draw out. I exhaled quite happily, and flattened my stomach against his so I could press an open mouthed kiss right under his ear. The restrained moan that reverberated deep within his chest was so priceless and so perfect. I dragged my dull ivories across his hide, scouring him and laving at the vulnerable muscle and tendon with gingerly nips and smatterings.

When I moved to sit up and sloppily capture his open mouth in my own, Karkat grunted, “Wait.” I paused in confusion and leaned back. He was breathing hard, still dazed, as he sat up as well, so abruptly, and backed me down until I was straddling his legs. For a moment, his stare was predatory, full of a troll I once knew. I shivered.

Karkat ran his timid fingers up my neck, and then through the back of my hair, pushing my face closer. I let it happen, full of curiously. He moved until the tip of his nose bumped against mine and I could feel the hurried puffs of hot air exiting there. His lips pressed a delicate but full peck to my own finally, lingering there for one shaky, finishing moment.

“There,” he muttered.

My lashes were weighted from him, the bunches of my hair bundled in the bars of his talons. I grinned, and then quickly laughed, with no limitations. Wild and bright, illuminated. Karkat’s eyes widened with feline fright, but it was a welcomed fear, and he offered me an unassured snort in reply. 

How did I ever maintain the patience to wait for that? Why did I ever wait longer than a fleeting second? I was a fool, an unknowing fool. I loved him so.

“I’m glad you slept here, so glad,” I giggled, a cadence of a sermon. My voice was soft and sweet as bells, ringing with joyous merriment. He wasn’t small anymore, not see-through but simply shy, smiling earnestly. I likely knew every part of him, all the riddles of his anatomy. I could feel his marrow in my soul. The nautical waves of his blood, pulp, and plasma, lingered in my heels and head.

“Me too,” he crowed, teeth showing wide and gleaming with wholeness.

I threw myself to him, wrapping my arms tight and square around his carved shoulders, almost knocking him down. He let us fall anyway, flat as to mend and merge us into the linen. I fed into him the soothing coolness of my visceral portions, the fleece of my skin, my admiration and appreciation of him.

“You know,” Karkat started, loud and close on my ear. “I’m also glad for something else.”

“What is it?”

“This isn’t pretend.”

  
There was so much there, so many murmurs of past and future, of the dead, the never born, the offspring of an unseen tomorrow. There was promise and swears of a world, one to build that’s safe and full of winners and survivors and life. It was set in stone, etched into creation as both of us had been.  
There were no metallic or fabricated halls, no people, no room and no bed.  
There was only Karkat and me.

“Yeah.”

He was my fire.  
He burned.

 

 


End file.
